What’s a Veteran Warrior to Do in the 21st Century? Brian Willson Says Love Earth and Organize a Revolution

I have never in my life cried so much at a TV news story as I did on the afternoon of September 1, 1987 while watching the footage of a U.S. Death Train running over the legs of peace activist, Earth First!er, and veteran of the U.S. war in Vietnam, S. Brian Willson.

I stomped around the den and kept throwing my arms downward in ultimate frustration. As I kept turning my head sideways to look back at the TV, I was crying in outrage and lament that the vast majority of my fellow Americans had blown off themselves getting involved in socially messy community organizing or even doing anything about everything that is critically important for all of us for far too long.

They had brushed aside into their shadows all the death and mayhem that undergirds our (and their own) Father Knows Best suburban lifeways until it had built up critically to the point that all that moral cowardice and psychic crap had exploded with blood, flesh, and bone fragments from the crushing legs of Brian Willson smashed under the steel wheels of that military industrial complex genocide machine in Richmond that maddening sunny day.

I have since had the honor and privilege of crossing paths and hanging out with Brian on a half-dozen occasions as we have shared friends and organize within many of the same activist communities on the west coast.

In Veterans Day weekend commemoration of the suffering brought by the Republican and Democratic parties’ military-industrial complex traitors of our day unto all of our veterans (and the people of the societies they’ve crushed) I present here various recordings of three of those occasions, in all of which Brian talks warrior-to-warrior about what we must do today for peace and ecological harmony.

In 1990, while we were organizing Redwood Summer, a campaign on nonviolent direct actions to save the last unprotected old growth native forests in the world, Headwaters Forest, someone exploded a car bomb in my team’s car, almost killing my two organizing partners, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. So Brian thought we had something in common with him and he showed up at a Redwood Summer rally in Fort Bragg, CA to offer solace and solidarity. (Sorry for those of you who can’t view Facebook videos!)

I videotaped Brian’s southern Humboldt County book tour appearance for his autobiography Blood on the Tracks.

Last year I was invited to co-host a two-hour interview with Brian by my pal KMUD DJ Honky Tonk Bill Thompson for his show Honky Tonk State of Mind.

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Andy in KMUD interview Gores Corporatist Politics

Andy is a Sanders Democrat

For Andy to be a Sanders Democrat means he is “pledged to fight like hell in Congress for the agenda and initiatives of Bernie Sanders and support his election in 2020.”

A VOTE FOR ANDY IS A VOTE TO IMPEACH TRUMP!

“We need to take the political revolution to the House floor and fight the Republicans as the traitors they are! Our efforts didn’t end on November 8, 2016.

“We’ve got to replace the Republicans and Clinton Democrats in Congress with Sanders Democrats for a Brand New Congress! Our nation, our people and the planet depend upon it!”

ANDY IS THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW GREEN AMERICA AGENDA IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALL AMERICAN WORKERS.

Andy signed on to the CONTRACT FOR AMERICAN RENEWAL. Signers pledge to introduce legislation for all the following within six months of entering Congress:

A $15 minimum wage

Infrastructure development

Taxing the elites

Taking bold action on climate destabilization

Ending the war in Afghanistan

Expanding Social Security and Medicare to provide high quality healthcare for everybody

Ending corporate personhood and reversing Citizens United

Free college tuition at public colleges and universities

Reversing globalist trade agreements!

“Signing CFAR is my commitment to everyone in the 2nd district to actually make a difference that will matter to their lives if they elect me to Congress in 2018.”

Andy is the Founder of THE ECOTOPIAN DEMOCRATS, the movement to redesign our infrastructure and build a NEW GREEN AMERICA to GET OFF FOSSIL FUELS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and create ECOLOGICALLY-SUSTAINABLE JOBS with UNION WAGES for all!

Andy has signed the contract for the PEACE DIVIDEND to pay every American a $15,000 federal tax rebate over a three year period.

“In the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, taxpayers were promised a Peace Dividend, but the Neocons in both corporate-controlled parties stole it all from us for a Sham War on Terror to give Corporations Warfare Welfare!”